Alexandria Gazette

Kidnapped by Gipsies.

A deal of excitement was occasioned at Bloomfield, N. J., Monday, by the stealing of little Edna Cronk, the step daughter of Frederick Crane, by a passing band of gipsies. The child was playing in the street during the afternoon with a number of companions when the tribe of nomads appeared on the road. The children huddled together on the roadside and gazed with wonder at the men, women and brightly painted horses.

Suddenly a tall woman, with black eyes, dark complexion and a gay gipsy dress, rushed from among the women she was walking with and seized Edna Cronk. She held a handkerchief over the child's face. and before the other children realized it Edna was placed in one of the gipsy wagons. Then the women and men who had been walking sprang into the wagon and the tribe drove off at high speed northward.

Edna's companions ran in great fright to their homes and related the story of the kidnapping. Every mother who heard it quickly carried her children into the house and locked the doors. Men mounted horses and in a few minutes a hardy and eager band of fathers were on the road to Paterson. in which direction the child stealers had fled. Constable Harvey and Hopler, the butcher. urged their companions to ride faster, as if fathers could spare horseflesh in such a pursuit. Along the route farmers joined the men when they were told what the John Gilpin ride of the townsmen was for.

Half a mile from Brookdale village one of the pursuers sighted the fleeing gipsies in a cloud of dust several hundred yards in advance. He shouted to his followers that if they put spurs to their horses they would soon have the miscreants in their hands and recover the abducted child.

The gipsies saw the coming horsemen and realized at a glance that they were pursued. They quickly lifted little Edna out of the big wagon, placed her on the road, lashed their horses into a dead run and increased their lead. The pursuers sprang from their horses when they came up to the child. and were as tender to her as if she was their own.

"Oh! save me from the bad people!" the child wailed. "Take me to my home."

"That we will very soon." one of the men said, "for we have babies of our own. All the time we were riding after the gipsies I was thinking how I would feel had it been my child."

Some of the men were in favor of continuing after the gipsies and giving them a good drubbing. Others said so long as the child had been recovered and had not been harmed the better plan would be to return home and allay the fears of the women folk. It was argued that there would be trouble in arresting such a large party so far out in the thinly settled part of the country. Besides, they had no legal power to do so. Therefore the men returned and were met by a number of men and women. The mother of Edna kissed and hugged her as though the child had been brought back from the dead, and the female neighbors were just as full of joy.